Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Death, Milk, and Diving Suits

For those who aren’t careful, a Psychoanalytic critique of a game appears to only be concerned with the fiction of a game and the relationship of the characters. Unless the game is Psychonauts, most games seem to have little to nothing to do with the human psyche. Neglecting how the game fiction and the gameplay (or game rules) come together to create the Psychological work in a game is a common pitfall. Another easy pitfall is to get wrapped up in Psychoanalyzing the developers of the game, or what may be infinitely more embarrassing, accidentally analyzing one’s own psychological state while trying to pass it off as an analysis of the game. Though it is true that the fiction of a game is an important part of any Psychoanalytic analysis, the gameplay is where the most profound sources of material because the interactivity of the game can influence and transform the player in more powerfully subtle ways than a passive medium. In the following essay, I intend to highlight the psychological work of BioShock that goes beyond the fiction and is backed by the gameplay experience of the player.

To begin, I’ll discuss the death work BioShock. Sigmund Freud theorized that death is biological driven. He called this the death drive in attempt to explain the wide spread self destruction found on this planet (death work). In a nutshell, death work is psychological and physical self-destruction. The evidence of this work can be seen in the individual who destroys him/herself by over eating or over dosing, as well as on the national level where whole nations are constantly at war. Death is a serious matter that we, the living, have no experience in. Yet, despite it being mysteriously and inescapably bound to the end of our lives, death is a force that is perhaps too terrifying for us to deal with. This is why we fear it. Knowing this, it is easy to see how death and the fear of death, shapes our psychology. After all, in Freudian psychoanalytic theory, fear is a key driving force.In BioShock, death work is evident in the fiction and behavior of splicers. Splicers are genetically mutated citizens of Rapture that are addicted to Adam and the power that is gained from it. Adam is the “genetic material that makes Rapture go round.” Tenenbaum revealed, however, that Adam is a drug that destroys the user: “Adam acts like a benign cancer, destroying native cells and replacing them with unstable stem versions. While this very instability is what gives it its amazing properties, it is also what causes the cosmetic and mental damage. You need more and more Adam just to keep back the tide. From a medical standpoint, this is catastrophic.” Aside from turning the user into a monster that will do nearly anything to obtain more Adam, hallucinations (visions of ghosts) are a common side effect: “Seems like some poor blighters have started seeing ghosts. Ghosts! Ryan tells me it’s a side effect of this plasmid business.” -McDonagh. Ultimately, using Adam ensures one’s psychological destruction. And that’s just the intangible destruction. In the game, splicers behave in a highly self destructive manner. In game terms, the failure of these enemies to assess the battle situation or even their own life and act in self preservation is simply poor AI. But, as part of a Psychological critique, these splicers are characters that consciously and actively throw their lives away. Skilled players can take on large numbers of these adversaries without problem. Even if the splicers didn’t know that they would be no match for the player, surely witnessing previous splicers easily fall to the player in one shot would inform them otherwise. In their rabid state starved for Adam, splicers can also attack Big Daddy’s hoping to harvest the protected litter sister for their next fix. It is very clear to the player, and to all citizens of Rapture that attacking a Big Daddy is a dangerous affair. These splicers are suicidal. Such behavior functions as self destruction on the psychological and physical level.

When analyzing people and material, Psychoanalytic critics and theorists have to be careful not to conceptualize the death drive to avoid moving death away from the world of actions, reactions, and responsibility. Turning death into an abstraction makes blunt its powerful force and by extension works to undermine a significant portion of our psychological frame work. If death is the greatest fear that frames, organizes, supports the existence of other fears (fear of abandonment, fear of intimacy), then removing the impact of death, or worse, removing death itself would work to destroy one’s identity or selfhood. In BioShock, the function of Vita Chambers remove the consequence of “death” in battle, thus turning it into an abstraction. According to the description of the Vita Chambers, “If you are killed by the hostile denizens of Rapture, you will be revived live and whole at the last Vita-Chamber you passed.” The gameplay in BioShock is structured in a way that when the player falls in battle, the game doesn’t reset back to a previous state to give the player another chance. Instead, everything remains as it was, and the player has only to jog back to where he/she fell and resume the battle refreshed of health and a little bit of Eve: “Some of your health will be restored, and you will always have at least a small amount of Eve.” Besides dangerously destroying what little game was present in BioShock by destroying a major structural consequence (based on the Classical game model), death becomes a joke. Without consequences, players quickly learn and fall into habits of taking what would be foolish risks in any other game. Snapping photograph after photograph while turrets and enemies attack you from all sides isn’t dangerous. Striking a Big Daddy from behind with a wrench just to taunt him is a fun game. And in a world where bombs, projectiles genetics, and guns rule, “wrench-revive-repeat” all opponents becomes an equally viable strategy. Falling into any of these or similar patterns works against any identity that exists between the player and game. Like whimsical, make-believe, fairy tale magic, Suchong refers to the Vita-Chambers ability to resurrect the dead with the word “poof:” They keep saying plasmid reconstruction this and quantum entaglement that, and then poof, dead people come back to life.” Suchong was a skeptic for good reason. Can there be life without death?

Freund’s theory of the superego, ego, and the id are represented by Ryan’s rules of Rapture, the player’s freedom of choice within the gameworld, and the Splicers that greedily roam Rapture respectively. The Superego by definition consists of the internalized social values that determine our sense of right and wrong in a particular culture. All of Andrew Ryan’s comments, ideas, rules, and regulations make up BioShock’s super ego. Hacking the vending machines is bad. Free enterprise is good. Big Daddy’s and little sisters are disgusting but necessary. Atlas also shares his views of what is right and wrong. From the beginning of the game, the player learns that plasmids are good and little sisters are little “Frankensteins” that can be disposed with without any ill feelings. True to the Freudian model, the id is directly opposed to the superego. The id is our instinctual selves and is singularly focused on fulfilling forbidden desires of all kinds without consideration of consequences. In BioShock, the id are represented by the splicers who only have a desire for Adam. As I have noted, Splicers will even throw themselves into the jaws of death in attempts to secure Adam from the Little Sisters. Representing the balance between the superego and the id is the ego, or the player of BioShock. The player is the conscious level of the game that experiences the world of Rapture through his/her senses. Because the game is in the first person perspective, they experience the world in a very intuitive natural way. In the game, the player hears Ryan prohibit hacking, yet he sees splicers hacking turrets and other machines, and has to determine for him/herself how to proceed. In this way, the player is the embodiment of the conflict between Ryan and all the orders he/she receives from the many characters who hold power over him/her, and the Splicers who relentlessly pursue Adam. As Freud states, the relationship between the superero, ego, and id speaks to our culture (in this case the dystopic Rapture) and ourselves. By indulging in the forbidden acts around Rapture, and taking out or restructuring the power structures by killing Ryan and Fontaine, the player literally balances out the super ego and the id by playing BioShock.

The family is very important in Freudian Psychoanalytic theory because of the how each member’s role in the family greatly shapes who they are. BioShock contains a very interesting family structure. The family I referred to is not the artificial family flashed in photographs triggered by Fontaine sinister control over the protagonist. And it is not Atlas’ family that was supposedly killed just before being rescued in the fishery. The family I will discuss is both more subtle and more obvious than that. The BioShock family I intend to discuss is made up of the Little Sisters, Big Daddys, Mother Goose (Tenenbaum), and the player. The Little Sisters are innocent little girls whose only concerns are harvesting Adam, finding angels, being tucked in for “beddy” time, and alerting the Big Daddys of any threat. The Big Daddys are the father figure; large, strong, protective. Tenenbaum is the mother figure. Her role throughout the game is of a more passive nurturer who would rather spare words than lift a finger to protect her “children.” So where does that leave the player? The player is the big brother who completes the oedipal conflict and sibling rivalry relationships. According to Freud, an oedipal conflict consists of competition with the parent of the same gender for the affection of the parent of the opposite gender. The player discovers early in the game, that Tenenbaum will make it “worth [their] while” to spare the little sisters instead of harvesting them. For many players, this promise of pleasing “Mother” is all that is needed to save every little sister they come across. In order to save more sisters and make Tenenbaum happier, the player must destroy his father, the Big Daddys, in combat the primary function of BioShock. What is interesting about this bizarre family is the player can choose which core issue they want to embody. When they save a little sister, they participate in the oedipal conflict. When players harvest the little sisters, they’re acting out of sibling rivalry in an attempt to punish the Little Sisters for taking away the attention of mom and dad. If they do both, then they personify both the oedipal conflict and sibling rivalry (and should seek help immediately). Of course I’m only joking about seeking help.

If you’re not completely convinced of the existence of the bizarre family relationships of BioShock, remember that the player cannot harm the Little Sisters outside of the saving/harvesting them. Unlike virtually every other object and surface in the game, shooting or striking at a Little Sister produces no sound effect or reaction from her whatsoever. What’s significant about this restriction is that the only way to affect the Little Sister is tied into the same decision that will either please Tenenbaum or not. In other words, the player is bound to interact with Little Sisters in ways that reinforce the physiological issues. Furthermore, by transforming into a Big Daddy, the player assumes a role that is physically and emotionally removed from Tenenbaum. When gathering the Big Daddy parts, Tenenbaum comments on how disgusting and monstrous the Big Daddy’s are as well as their repulsive stench. In other words, the Player becomes the father figure the player has fought so hard against (even when there’s no little sister present) as part of his inescapable psychological destiny. The Big Daddy armored diving suit that the player wears shields him/her from bullets and emotional intimacy as the guilt from disobeying “mother” by harvesting the sisters, or from destroying “father” haunts the player into becomes what he/she hated most.

After practicing killing your father over and over with each Big Daddy, killing Ryan, the protagonist’s actual father, seemed like no big deal. But you’re not the only one with desires for the mother. Fontaine, during a moment of exhilaration after splicing up for the first time exclaims: “This stuff is the mother’s milk…” We’ll just leave Fontaine be for right now. I won’t even get into an interpretation of the protagonist’s romp through Rapture as part of dream. That’s another essay for another time. Hopefully this essay helped to reveal the physiological work within BioShock. If you’ve come to this point and aren’t convinced about anything I’ve discussed, well….as a true psychoanalysts would say… you’re just repressed.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

Seriously you are stupid to believe anything Atlas says in that game. You do know he pretty much created your character "Jack". He genetically designed Jack to do whatever he says and that he is the real villian in the game. Have you even played the game all the way through? Maybe you should do so more research before you psychoanalyze a game. There are so many other factors involved in the city of Rapture that you don't have a clue about. That's why people like this game, because it's more complex than origanlly think it is. Like I said before you should really know all the facts before you write anything again in the near future.

Updated Critical-Glossary

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Critical-Glossary

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Alphabetical

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abstract mechanic

Some gameplay mechanics are completely artificial, meaning they do not make logical sense based on the form of the game. When such mechanics are privileged within a game's design, we tend to label these games as being "arcade" like. I describe these gameplay mechanics as being abstract.

It is a design innovation that applies to games that are played in real time. By taking the progression of real time and breaking it down in specific contextual ways, a new level of game design can be reached. This is the essence of asynchronous time, or async.

In music, Counterpoint is the writing of musical lines that sound different on their own, but harmonize when played together. How the melody of a song interacts with the other lines is the focus of Counterpoint.

Counterpoint, in gaming, is a word for the way gameplay develops past optimization by layering interactive elements into a single gameplay experience. When each layer influcences, interacts, and enhances the functions/gameplay of each other layer the gameplay emerges into a medium of expression that reflects the individuality of a player and the dynamics that reflect the complexity of the world we live in.

A measure of how the changes in the method of input are paralleled with the action in the game according to the form of the mechanic. If you quickly press the green button on your controller, does the game quickly press the button on the screen? If you hold the button on your controller, is the button on the screen held down as well?

An measure of how the game world responds to the action. According to the form of the game world and the mechanic, does the world react realistically? What is the extent of the properties of the mechanic? Are the reactions to the mechanic special cases or can the resulting actions continue to effect the game world?

Like Marxist criticism, the most successful Feminist critique of a game involves analyzing how the range of player functions that affect female characters directly or indirectly reveal the operations of patriarchy. When the player is encouraged or forced to play in a way that depicts men as strong, rational, protective and women as weak, emotional, submissive, and nurturing, then the game can be said to support and reinforce patriarchal genders roles and ideologies. Patriarchal values work to oppress women, and all feminist theory and criticism works to promote women‘s equality. A Feminist analysis can become more complex when finding examples of actions toward women if a game doesn’t feature any women or the game allows for limited interaction with women. Writing essays about such games often leads to finding evidence by absence. In other words, a Feminist critic’s central piece of evidence may be what can’t be done to women instead of what can.

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flow

How a game accelerates or creates forward momentum. This factor of gameplay isn't necessarily about speed. More specifically, it looks at how a game's interactions feed back into the player's options/experience like a snowball rolling down hill.

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folded level design

Level design that resuses a space with the second use containing an extra layer to the gameplay that builds on the knowledge and experiences established on the first layer.

Form fits function is a powerful game design principle that has powered many of Nintendo's greatest games. Using familiar visuals, games can use their form to communicate to the player. If there is a ball resting on a tee and the player avatar has a golf club in their hands, they better be able to swing the club and hit the ball. Otherwise, why put such things in front of the player in the first place? Keeping the form true to the functions and limits of a game creates the cleanest most easily enjoyable experiences.

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function creates form

When a game's mechanics inspire, shape, and define the creation of ancillary parts of a game. ie. story, setting, premise, characters, music, audio

Interplay is the back and forth encouragement of player mechanics between any two elements in a game. Put simply, interplay is where actions and elements in a game aren't means to an end, but fluid opportunities that invite the player to play around with the changing situation.

A measure of the degree to which input method matches the form of the game. If there's a green button on the screen, and a green button on your game controller, the form of the game is liked to the input of pressing the green button on the controller.

Like Psychoanalytic criticism, Marxist criticism can seemingly critique a game by looking solely at a its fiction. However, both of these critical modes, in relation to videogames, achieve a deeper, more profound level of analysis when the elements of interactivity between the game and player are taken into consideration. Many Marxist critics of literature believe that film, literature, art, music, and other forms of entertainment such as videogames are the primary bearers of cultural ideologies. While we’re being entertaining by these medias, our defenses are lowered making us all the more susceptible to ideological programming. A Marxist critic of videogames looks for how a game supports or condems capitalist, imperialist, or classist values. Perhaps the best and most obvious place to look toward in games is the role and function of money. Some games represent money with actual U.S. dollars or some other form of real world currency. Others use fictional currency from bell, to gil, to star bits, or even points. What the player can purchase, how these items or services function, and how the money circulates within the game world all become important areas of analysis.

"New Classical criticism focuses on identifying a game's primary function/action that sums up all of the player's actions, functions, and abilities into a single expression. This expression can be thought of as the interpretation of the game or what the gamer is actually doing when he/she plays. Sometimes the primary function can be encapsulated in a single word. For example, the primary function of the Super Mario platforming series is "jump". After the primary function is identified, the New Classical critic then looks at a game's formal elements to analyze how they promote the primary function. The formal elements include Sound, Music, Art style, Story, Graphics, level design, enemies, etc. Because the New Classical critic privileges interactivity over passivity (especially when focused into a limited number of rules and actions), such a critic is only concerned with how these elements shape the gameplay experience, and assumes that any formal element in a game is only meaningful when it supports the primary function and exists in a lower state of priority to that function. In other words, elements like story can't be more stressed and more important to a game than the gameplay. Even if a game is designed according to the conventions and assumptions of Western game design, it can still be critiqued in the Classical mode."

A type of multi-fold level design where the creases and layers are so flexible and/or dynamic that considering the possibilities within a single level are interconnected and complex. Considering the shape created from a multi-fold level is similar to observing an origami figure.

For those who aren’t careful, a Psychoanalytic critique of a game appears to only be concerned with the fiction of a game and the relationship of the characters. Unless the game is Psychonauts, most games seem to have little to nothing to do with the human psyche. Neglecting how the game fiction and the gameplay (or game rules) come together to create the Psychological work in a game is a common pitfall. Another easy pitfall is to get wrapped up in Psychoanalyzing the developers of the game, or what may be infinitely more embarrassing, accidentally analyzing one’s own psychological state while trying to pass it off as an analysis of the game. Though it is true that the fiction of a game is an important part of any Psychoanalytic analysis, the gameplay is where the most profound sources of material because the interactivity of the game can influence and transform the player in more powerfully subtle ways than a passive medium.

The set of mechanics that do not make up the set of primary mechanics. These mechanics usually aid and help shape the primary mechanic.

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sections (sub-sections)

All games can be broken down into sub-sections or sections. Whether a game is broken down by rooms, loading sections, cut scenes, stages, levels, rounds, or turns, if a game has a mechanic that is repeated, then it can be divided into sections.

Structures are probably the most recognizable feature of videogames. Because structures create the foundation for the game rules and player to learn these rules, analyzing structure develops a clearer insight into how a game works at its core. We're all familiar with the structures of genre. Any gamer can instantly recognize a first person shooter like Halo from a puzzle game like Tetris. Each gaming genre has a certain look to it that is the result of the gameplay structures. Like with any genre, the degree to which the conventions are followed or deviated from varies greatly from game to game. Recognizing a game's structure is an acute way of talking about how a game works in or outside of its genre.

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suspension

In counterpoint, when a game element or game idea is offset form the established pattern of game ideas to create scenarios where the element/idea can carry over and influence other game ideas.

...about Critical-Gaming

We have come to a point where how we talk about video games is insufficient in expressing how we feel and think about them. With each year comes increasingly complex games, yet we are still, for the most part, writing and talking about games on a shallow consumer level.

It is time to start thinking and writing critically about games. However, before we can do this, we must approach gaming from a critical mode or mindset. To do this, we must first understand of how the different parts of a game work together (game design). Unfortunately, many of the who have experience in this area spend their time making video games. Beyond that, the body of knowledge that does exist is scattered at best. For this reason, it is hard for a thorough understanding of game design and critique to become widespread.

I have started this blog in efforts to inform both gamers and non-gamers of the complexities of gaming and how it compares to any other art form (music, literature, movies). Using literary critical theory and music theory as a starting point, I have developed a comprehensive set of critical modes for video game critique. By writing in these critical modes, and by critiquing other video game reviews, I hope to raise our understanding and expectations of video game journalism, critique, and even video games themselves.

We already have a loose idea of what it means to be a core gamer. A casual gamer. And a hardcore gamer. I hope with the right mindset, we can become critical-gamers, who don't shun our fellow gamers for thinking deeply about games but embrace the change we wish to see in the world.